Your editor has been a
musician for many decades. He started the first band his Quaker
school ever had and played drums with bands up until 1980 when
he switched to stride piano. He had his own band until the mid-1990s
and also played with the New Sunshine Jazz Band, Hill City Jazz
Band, the Not So Modern Jazz Band and the Phoenix Jazz Band.

Thanks to Bob Walter on
trumpet (above), and clarinetists including Jimmy Hamilton, Coleman
Hankins (below) and Don Rouse (above), plus the driving bass
of Paul Hettich - we got along much of the time without a drummer
(although not on the tracks here). Having two horns gave us a
bigger sound and the lack of percussion got us gigs in places
where drums would have been too much.

What does this all have
to do with news and politics? Only this, as I wrote in one of
my books:

"The essence of jazz
is the same as that of democracy: the greatest amount of individual
freedom consistent with a healthy community. Each musician is
allowed extraordinary liberty during a solo and then is expected
to conscientiously back up the other musicians in turn. The two
most exciting moments in jazz are during flights of individual
virtuosity and when the entire musical group seems to become
one. The genius of jazz (and democracy) is that the same people
are willing and able to do both."

The recording of the Phoenix
Jazz Band was made at the Central Ohio Jazz Festival in 1990
and features George James on saxophone on 'Apex Blues', band
leader Bob Walter on trumpet, Coleman Hankins on clarinet and
your editor on piano, among others. The sound effects come from
the audience.

George James was 84 years
old at the time and had to be helped to the stage. Once he got
there it was a different story as is apparent on the cut. He
had sixty recordings behind him and had been a regular with both
Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller. The tune we played with him
was the Apex Blues written by Jimmy Noone in honor of the second
floor Apex Club on the south side of Chicago where Noone had
an orchestra in the 1920s. The club was raided and closed in
1930 by federal agents enforcing prohibition. One of those who
played with Noone was Earl 'Fatha' Hines. Another was George
James, who played in Noone's group before going on the road with
Louis Armstrong.

We played just two tunes
with James - the other was Misty - but for a stride piano
player like myself to go even eight bars with one of Fats Waller's
sidemen is about as close to heaven as one can reasonably expect
to get. And who would have guessed it would happen in Columbus
Ohio? But, then, as Fats used to say, "One never knows,
do one?"

Sam Smith's last
drum gig was a party for Walter Mondale after the inauguration
of Ronald Reagan. Sam offered to let Mondale sit in but he said,"
Thanks but I'm in enough trouble already." After this gig,
Sam switched to stride piano.